Apart
by SteveGarbage
Summary: The flood of courtiers around him was nearly as thick and frenzied as the new Divine. But the conversations he had were distracted all night, his eyes constantly checking back across the room and the smile on his face turned up by force of will alone. All of Val Royeaux was celebrating. All of Val Royeaux, except the leader of the Inquisition.


He sat in a chair, an arsenal of tools splayed out on the floor around him.

He carefully lifted the oil can, gently letting a single drop of golden-colored oil drip in between the gears. He worked the small wrenches in his hands as delicately as a thief cracking the most complex locks. He slowly rubbed the cloth in the small joints where all of the components linked together just right in a single, mechanical symphony.

Varric hummed under his breath, the tones of the song he could never sing quietly vibrating through his head as he fine-tuned Bianca.

She deserved nothing less than his utmost attention, care and love.

All of Val Royeaux was celebrating tonight. The grand ball at the Grand Cathedral would now be in its seventh hour. But he had to get away after the first three hours of smalltalk with nobility, overflowing adulation and toast after toast after toast to the health and wisdom of the new Divine. Divine Victoria might be the toast of the capital tonight, but to him, she would always be the woman who marched into Kirkwall looking for Hawke but only finding him and his stories.

A few hours of disassembling, cleaning and putting Bianca back together felt magnitudes less tedious in comparison to standing around and acting cordial all night. It wasn't any ill will toward Cassandra - bygones were bygones - but fatigue that drove him away. Val Royeaux, Orlais, the Inquisition, all of it was growing more and more exhausting by the day.

But when it was just him and Bianca, the rest of the world fell away.

He could still remember the way her eyes lit up the first time she laid her eyes upon the fourteenth prototype. She hovered around it, her eyes pouring over the stock and handle, peering down the barrell, peeking inside at the mechanisms before ever laying a hand on it. Bianca dissected the crossbow with such ease and grace, carefully placing each screw and pin and gear in organized lines as she absorbed how it all fit together.

She never seemed to blink as she worked, her fingers moving deliberately and cautiously. She tinkered, tweaked and reassembled. She carefully placed the bolts one on top of each other inside the body and clicked the housing back into place.

"I'll let you have the honors," she said.

Varric could still remember the vibration the first time he felt the gears jump to life, heard the stretching of wires and arms as prod pulled, felt the body kick back slightly as it threw the first bolt down the stock, listened to the whoosh as the quarrel cut the air and drove into the wall.

But there was nothing comparable the thrill as he pulled the trigger the second time and the crossbow executed the same ritual flawlessly. Bianca crossed her arms over her chest and smirked.

"Remind me again why I didn't marry you?" Varric said as he cradled the crossbow against his chest as if it were his newborn daughter, a treasure that only she could give him.

"My family tried to have you assassinated the last time they found one of the letters you sent me."

Varric hoisted the crossbow again, clenching his eye and looking down the stock. It would need a scope. Peerlessly crafted magnifying glass. The Tranquil in Kirkwall might be able to manage something workable.

"I might be able to get used to looking over my shoulder my entire life for you."

Bianca smiled a smile that was so full of sadness he could feel his heart rip in two. "It's too bad you're a lover, not a fighter. Not even with a nice crossbow." She placed her hand lightly atop his shoulder. "It's for the best we're not together."

He lowered the crossbow, reaching across his chest and resting his fingers atop hers. Varric sighed.

"If only that could be true."

There was a quiet knock on the door frame and Varric looked up from his work. In the doorway, an exhausted looking man, the red formal attire unbuttoned, two long necks of two green bottles clutched between the fingers of his right hand hanging limply at his side.

"I hope I'm not interrupting," Inquisitor Trevelyan said as he pointed to the crossbow. "I didn't mean to walk in on Bianca in such a state of… undress."

Varric laughed and waved the Inquisitor in. "Modesty was never Bianca's strongest trait."

Trevelyan pulled another chair up, passing one of the bottles to Varric. He looked at the decorative label wrapped around the glass. "Hard apple cider?" Varric raised an eyebrow and tilted the bottle questioningly.

"What can I say?" Trevelyan replied with a shrug. "It's Orlais. Beers and ales are 'barbaric,' fit for only Ferelden Dog Lords and so on and so forth."

Varric put the bottle to his lips and tilted it, taking a gulp. It was so tart, that even the slight bitter aftertaste couldn't seem to wash out the cloying sweetness. He scowled as he pulled the bottle away and shook his head. Trevelyan smiled.

"Not my first choice, but all they had suited for carryout," he said, taking a drink and finishing with an equally disappointed look across his face.

Varric placed the bottle on the ground and picked up his cleaning rag again, spritzing a little bit of metal shine onto the cloth and slowly wiping down Bianca's arms. Trevelyan wrapped his hands around the throat of the bottle, his elbows on his thighs, leaning forward off the edge of his chair.

"I figured you'd be stuck at the ball until lights out," Varric said.

Trevelyan and Cassandra had… Been close? Fallen in love? Danced the steps of courtship for the first time, but danced them masterfully? Varric hadn't decided exactly how he could explain it on the page. The other stories had come so easily, but nothing about "All This Shit is Weird" was coming out right. Fiction, lies, embellishments were easy. The truth, or most of it, was much more difficult.

It was something. And then the Chantry had chosen Cassandra. And she agreed. And she left the Inquisition. And Trevelyan stayed. And Skyhold just didn't feel right any more.

"I just had to get out of there," Trevelyan said with his eyes downcast at the floor. He lifted one of his hands off the bottle, ran it back through his hair and dropped it back into place.

All of the ballroom buzzed and turned around Divine Victoria. The Inquisitor was there, just a few steps behind and a few steps to the side. The flood of courtiers around him was nearly as thick and frenzied as the new Divine. But the conversations he had were distracted all night, his eyes constantly checking back across the room and the smile on his face turned up by force of will alone. All of Val Royeaux was celebrating. All of Val Royeaux, except the leader of the Inquisition.

"I know the feeling," Varric said. He dragged the rag slowly across the upper right arm, the shine on the metal so vibrant he could see his own reflection, stretched and distorted as it was.

Trevelyan stared at the floor, slowing rotating the bottle in a small circle, the putrid apple cider swirling around the glass. His fingernails tapped against the shoulder of the bottle, each tap releasing a quiet clink.

"How's Bianca?" he asked without lifting his eyes.

"Still as beautiful and amazing as the day we first met," Varric said and tapped his knuckles against the wooden body. "I do coddle her, though."

Trevelyan shook his head. "No, I meant the real Bianca."

"Still as beautiful and amazing as the day we first met," Varric repeated, as he lifted a flathead screwdriver to re-calibrate the tension spring on the trigger. "I assume. Can't say. I haven't heard from her since that business in Valammar. We don't get to talk much. Family blood feuds and all that."

Trevelyan nodded slightly and twirled the body a little faster. Varric twisted the screw about a half turn to tighten everything back up and put the screwdriver back in its place. He folded in Bianca's arms and set the crossbow down on the floor too, picking up his bottle of nasty cider.

"All right, Hero," Varric said, tipping the lip of his bottle toward Trevelyan. "Shoot."

Trevelyan lifted his left hand again, rubbing the stubble around his mouth, his fingers pinching in at his chin, his eyes wrestling a decision. The hand floated out in front of him, his index finger pointing out, bobbing up and down as if he was struggling to find the right words.

"I…" He stopped. Restarted. "Cassandra's really Divine now."

"Yes." It was all Varric could think to say. He wasn't good at these types of things. It was much easier to just kill of his characters than have them try to work through their feelings. It's why his romance stories also came out so flat.

"We agreed that her taking over would be best for the Chantry, the best for Thedas," Trevelyan continued. "Even though we knew what it would cost us."

The Divine was supposed to live a life of celibacy, although history had some notable stories about young women who ascended the to the Sunburst Throne that were a bit more… liberal, with the rules. Then again, Varric couldn't be sure which of those were truth and which were invented smut that now was passed along like truth. Fiction had a way of becoming reality, sometimes. He knew better than most. Most of what people knew of Kirkwall and the Champion was filtered through his retelling.

Trevelyan's face was so downtrodden though he looked like he might cry, if heroes were capable of crying. They're weren't, at least not in any stories Varric had read. But the blank stare he held at the floor and the uneasy bottle spinning and tapping all screamed that he was in pain, like someone had plunged a dagger right into his heart.

The Inquisitor was a man caught between what he had to do and what he wanted to do. That was the worst type of grind, the kind of battle that only the heroes had to fight.

"How do you cope, Varric?"

Varric snorted and pointing the tip of his bottle toward the crossbow folded on the ground. "Definitely don't name your weapon after her," he advised. "You start to develop a weird, unhealthy attachment to it. And it just makes you remember every day how much you miss her."

He couldn't tell Trevelyan that the longing never went away. He couldn't tell him that all the dirty, watered-down ale he could drink in a dingy Lowtown pub couldn't make him forget. He couldn't tell him that he'd flip through the letters on his desk every day looking for that one that was distinctly different. And he couldn't tell him that when he thinks he can't go on another day without seeing her so he moves the earth itself to make it so, that the short meeting only rips the wounds open as wide and deep as they'd ever been.

How could Varric be expected to give him the solace he was seeking when he hadn't been able to find any for himself?

"I just try to keep busy. Take care of my business. Keep a step ahead of the Merchants Guild and the Carta. Help people that I can help. Stay alive," Varric said, realizing he was rambling. "Things just can't work out now. But shit happens. Maybe it will work itself out some day. At least, that's what I have to tell myself to justify all this hanging around, waiting. Even though I can't tell her I love her, I still love her. I can't change that about myself."

Varric groaned and shook his head, smirking, and threw up his hands in surrender. "I don't know, Hero. I'm no good at this type of thing."

Trevelyan cracked a small smile. "Honesty isn't exactly your strong suit."

"No, no it isn't," Varric agreed.

There was an uncomfortably long pause, before Trevelyan sat up a little and extended his bottle out toward Varric.

"Thanks for helping," he said.

"I'm not sure I actually did anything," Varric answered.

"Even still."

Varric lifted his own bottle, clinking the necks of the two bottles together. Trevelyan lifted his and gulped down what was left, a pained look on his face as he swallowed down the rest of the bitter apple cider. Varric took a much more restrained slug and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

Varric let out a sigh. He wondered what Bianca was up to and whether she was thinking about him, too. Probably not. She had a life she actually lived, not one that she maintained just to keep going.

Trevelyan placed his empty bottle down on the floor and scratched the back of his head with his right hand, matching Varric's sigh. It would take time. It took several years after his parting with Bianca before he could get where he was today, a dwarf and an unhealthy attachment to a crossbow.

"I'll never understand, Hero, what you see in Cassandra," Varric teased. "Or did she capture and interrogate you until you gave in to her demands, too?"

Trevelyan smiled. He shouldn't have smiled, but he did.

"Not exactly…" Varric leaned back as the story began to pour out of him, the little anecdotes, the grand gestures all recounted with a smile on his face and laughter in his voice. He said all the right things in all the right ways. They had a good thing, Varric knew.

Trevelyan would be all right in time.

Even if circumstances kept them apart.


End file.
